


Another Night, Another Role

by fab_ia



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Jacobi bites, Jacobi gets to yell a bit because it’s what he deserves, Kepler pines, Kepler’s in a band, Kepler’s way of dealing with problems aka he just avoids them, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:13:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28537173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fab_ia/pseuds/fab_ia
Summary: ‘“See you in the morning,” Jacobi says, winks, and the only reason Kepler follows him to the door is definitely only so he can lock it as he leaves.’Plus: bass guitar, avoidance, regrets.(AKA, the usual, when it comes to these two.)
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	Another Night, Another Role

**Author's Note:**

> written for @vanilla.phantoms on Instagram because he’s been talking about these two with me and i LOVE them (plus his art of them is really so good and I’m only sorry I couldn’t fit all the softness in here)

The way Kepler leans down to kiss him, in that moment, is soft and gentle, treating Jacobi as though he were something carved out of glass rather than the flesh-and-blood monster he’s shaped into. He kisses back, but when he kisses back he  _ bites,  _ teeth closing on Kepler’s bottom lip and drawing out a gasp from him as his eyes fly open. He leans back, enough to search Jacobi’s face with his eyes, and Jacobi grins. 

“Got a little something there, boss,” he says, and Kepler thinks suddenly that it might be more of a smirk than a grin. He stills completely, staring down at him, first of all because of his damn  _ face _ , before his eyes widen when he notes the faint taste of iron in his mouth.

“You made me  _ bleed?” _

This time, Jacobi’s grin could be described as wolfish, and Kepler groans as he ducks his head to mouth at his throat, leaving thin streaks of red against the skin there. Jacobi lets out a long and shaky breath, arching his back into the movements like it’s all a performance, like he’s playing a part - a feeling Kepler’s all-too familiar with, on the edge of his mind even as he’s leaving hickies across his collarbone, just where they’ll be hidden under his clothes for work the next day. 

“Jacobi,” Kepler breathes, too soft by far. His name shouldn’t sound like a plea -  _ he’s  _ the one in control here, no matter how some part of him wants to be anything but. Jacobi looks up at him, eyelashes dark against his skin, grin on his face once more, and Kepler groans as he ducks his head again. This, he realises, is dangerous. 

It’s over for him when Jacobi shifts their positions so he’s straddling his lap, one hand in Kepler’s hair, before he bites down on the join of his shoulder and earns a cry as Kepler comes. It  _ aches,  _ it’s going to bruise and hurt for days, but all that runs through his mind at that moment is  _ he’s marking me as his. _

“That was good,” he says a little later, as casually as though they were discussing the weather outside. Kepler eyes him a little incredulously - Jacobi’s halfway through getting dressed again, doing the button on his jeans, while Kepler pretends he hasn’t been watching. “What? It  _ was  _ good.”

‘Good’ feels a little like an understatement, honestly. “Mmhm,” Kepler hums. “Yeah, it was.”

“We should do it again,” Jacobi continues, turning to face him and tilting his head to one side a little. “Don’t you think?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“It’s not just about what  _ I  _ \- okay. Yeah, okay, sure, if you’re going to play it like that. I want to do this again.”

Kepler has known for a long time that he’s very,  _ incredibly  _ selfish, but selfishness isn’t enough to explain the relief that goes through him then, the way he feels himself relax when he realises  _ okay, good, we can pretend just a little bit longer.  _

He likes the role of a lover that he’s been cast in, because even though all the intimacy is feigned and false he still gets all the  _ emotion _ from it, everything underlying is still just as present as if it were real. 

“Alright,” he says slowly, “alright. That’s fine. We can do this again.”

“Y’know,” Jacobi says, “feels kinda like you’re gonna get a calendar out and ask when next works for me.”

Kepler doesn’t stop himself grinning. “How about Thursday evening, six-thirty?”

“You’re such a dick,” Jacobi says, but there’s no real venom behind it, not like the first time they’d done this. “Got any openings sooner?”

The truth of the matter is that Jacobi could come over  _ anytime  _ and Kepler would let him in, would probably give him just about anything he asked for. It’s not a realisation he’s glad for, not one he’s pleased by, because the fact he has such a glaring weakness - that he has for a long time and he’s hidden it pretty damn well - doesn’t sit right with him. 

“Well,” Kepler says, “you know my schedule well enough, don't you? You can guess when I’m free, Jacobi.”

“Yeah, I do,” he says, crouching as he reaches for his shirt. “See you tomorrow, then.”

Tomorrow, Kepler thinks, should come sooner than it will while also never coming at all. He almost sighs when Jacobi pulls his shirt over his head again - simple pleasures, and all that, and Jacobi’s _attractive_ \- but schools his face into something more neutral, almost cold, before he turns around, ruffling his hair into his usual ‘artfully messy but also I want to look like I just got pushed through a hedge’ look. The worst thing about it, in Kepler’s opinion, is that it’s exactly as soft as it looks. 

“Yeah,” Kepler says. “At  _ work _ tomorrow. Our very,  _ very,  _ professional job.”

“You got it, sir,” Jacobi says, saluting. “I’ve never seen your dick, it’s never been inside me, you didn’t leave, like, thirty hickies all over me.”

Jesus fucking _ Christ,  _ he’s crude. 

“Yes. Exactly.”

“See you in the morning,” Jacobi says, winks, and the only reason Kepler follows him to the door is  _ definitely  _ only so he can lock it as he leaves and the fact he leans his forehead against it when it’s closed is nothing but sheer coincidence. It’s not fondness. It’s  _ not.  _

Jacobi doesn’t even look up from whatever he’s designing when Kepler comes in - not a surprise, but the fact he’s there early does feel like one. He lingers at the edge of his desk, peering over the top of a monitor. 

“Morning, sir,” Jacobi says, not looking up. “Got over the roadblock with these schematics you asked for, the long-range ballistics. The ones that you’re pretending aren’t just a new toy for yourself - it’s not even Christmas, sir, there’s no excuse - and are actually for R&D, or whatever.”

The way he refers to what’s essentially a powerful gun as a  _ toy  _ shouldn’t be charming, shouldn’t be part of what Kepler likes about him, but he can’t stop himself huffing out a laugh anyway. “What,” he says, “you had an idea and came in early to work on it?”

“Yeah,” Jacobi says, eyeing the cup he’s sat beside his keyboard that Kepler realises is one of his. “Better software to do it, here, and it’s a better environment.”

“Better environment,” Kepler repeats, flat.

“Uh-huh,” Jacobi says, taking a sip from the cup and wincing.  _ “Cold.  _ But yeah, I mean, home’s home, I sleep there, whatever, but work means work and focus. Associations, or whatever.”

Kepler’s grown far too used to Jacobi, because that makes more sense than it would have a few months ago. He nods, and thinks,  _ I’ll check how he’s doing in a couple hours. _

Just fine, it turns out, and he’s forwarded his notes on the design to R&D by the end of the day, which leaves him with free time to work on a paper he’s been drafting up - regarding something or other, Kepler’s admittedly not kept up with it as much as he could have - and judging by the way he’s tucked himself up in the seat it’s going well enough, because there’s no glaring and he’s actually typing something that doesn’t look like the word ‘fuck’ over and over. 

“Jacobi,” he says, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder as he passes, “it’s six. You staying late?”

“Oh,” Jacobi says, “I don’t think so, sir. Not much left to do that can’t be done tomorrow, or some other time.”

“Right,” Kepler says. “Good work.”

“Isn’t it always,” Jacobi grins. Smug. Asshole. “You got any plans this evening, Major?”

“Y’know,” Kepler says, tapping his finger against his jaw, thoughtful, “I don’t think I have.”

* * *

The arrangement they had all those years ago seems to have been firmly shoved into the category of ‘something to never, ever be spoken of again on pain of death’ which Kepler is fine with, really, since thinking about  _ that  _ means thinking about  _ them,  _ means thinking about a time before Jacobi had made it clear just how easily he could stand to get rid of him. 

(“Y’know,” he’d said one night, perched at one end of the couch in the apartment they were staying in together, “if I was doing it again, I wouldn’t tell Minkowski to shoot you.”

“You… wouldn’t?”

“God, no, I’d do it myself. ‘If you want something done, do it yourself’, y’know?”

“Mmhm.”

“But hey, lucky you, huh? ‘Least you get to keep breathing.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kepler said. “Lucky me.”)

It means, predictably, that Kepler can’t  _ stop  _ thinking about it and mourning the loss of it, that he can’t stop thinking about the things he’d have done differently if only so that he and Jacobi weren’t left like this - irrevocably changed and yet still so damn similar to how they always were. 

“You regret things, don’t you?” Jacobi asks all of a sudden, and Kepler looks up from the cutting board and the slices of meat sitting on it to stare at him a little blankly instead.

“What?”

“Pretty sure you heard me,” Jacobi says, “but, okay. You regret things.”

“What things?”

“It’s almost cute you think I’m a mind reader,” he says with a sigh. “Choices. Choices  _ you  _ made, specifically. Most of it ‘cause you don’t like me being mad at you.”

“Oh, you’re mad at me? Shit, Jacobi, why didn’t you tell me, I  _ hadn’t noticed.” _

Jacobi snorts. “You still think you’re scary? You’re not.”

“Jacobi.”

“Oh, what?  _ What?  _ You don’t wanna have this out, clear the air, go back to just tolerating each other? Pretend I didn’t want you dead? You wanna act like my best friend isn’t dead because of choices  _ you  _ made?”

Honestly, yes. He does. 

“Jacobi, calm down.”

“I’m calm,” he says. “I’m  _ very  _ fucking calm.”

“I know you’re angry -“

“With good reason, uh-huh.”

“But is that really a reason to ruin dinner?”

Not the best time for a joke, which Kepler realises as soon as it leaves his mouth, but he bites his tongue a few seconds too late. Jacobi stares at him utterly incredulously for a few seconds before he shakes his head and takes a few steps back, until he’s only barely on the threshold of the kitchen. 

“You know what your problem really is, Kepler?” Jacobi says, his voice low. “It’s that even  _ you  _ don’t know what’s going on in your head. You don’t even know what you’re feeling, do you? You don’t know if you regret anything, you don’t know what the fuck you think. It’s funny, actually. Mostly pathetic, but it’s definitely still a  _ little _ bit funny. If only you’d ever bothered to learn how to be a human being.”

He’s turned on his heel and left before Kepler can even fully process what he said, and he hears the front door slam shut seconds before he starts to laugh. He puts the knife down - which somehow makes it worse when he recognises the action, because Jacobi didn’t even care he was holding a literal weapon, that he could have been hurt - and rests his palms on the countertop as he does. 

Jesus  _ fucking  _ Christ. 

  
  


Kepler leaves. 

It isn’t as impulsive a decision as people would likely imagine it to be, because he knows for a fact that Jacobi’s going to prefer life without him there, and the apartment’s in both their names - the names they’re using for now, at any rate, since  _ Daniel Jacobi  _ and _ Warren Kepler  _ are long-dead - it’s a joint contract and even without him paying half, Jacobi’s gonna be able to afford it with the payout from Goddard. That’s not to say Kepler hasn’t left money for him, for his part, because it would be wrong of him to do that. 

So - Kepler leaves. 

He leaves, and he fucks off, goes south, joins a goddamn  _ band  _ because the time he spent with callouses on his hands was pretty damn good, from what he remembers, and turns out to be right. The bass feels good under his hands, low, runs through him as he flashes a grin at his bandmates and moves a hand up the neck, presses the strings down hard, loses himself in it. 

“Damn good to have you with us,” the drummer says one night, clapping her hand on his shoulder as he laughs. “I mean it! You’re exactly what we needed.”

“Yeah,” he says, running one of his nails over the frets and feeling every bump beneath it.  _ Click. Click.  _ “This is exactly what I needed, too.”

Not, strictly speaking, a lie, but there’s something missing, there’s something - wrong. He’s trying not to think about it. 

Bars. Stages. Crowds. People  _ like them,  _ at least well enough that they’re gonna come along and listen, and it feels good to spend time with people that don’t have expectations of who he’s  _ meant  _ to be, who don’t know what he’s done in the past and don’t have their opinions of him coloured by all of that. To them, he’s just a bass player. He’s just the guy with the scar that likes to wrap his arms around his bandmates when he’s laughing. He’s  _ nobody.  _ Warren Kepler is a name they’ll never hear. 

He’s never been more glad to shed an identity so completely before.

* * *

Another night, another set to play, another few hours lost in the atmosphere - the  _ hype,  _ the way the music just flows. Bass was a good choice, in his very professional opinion, because of the way he can  _ feel  _ it, the hum and the notes in his bones, not just his heart. 

“One,” he mumbles, “two, three, four -“

_ Yeah,  _ there’s the bridge. He chances a glance up, always wondering if they’re being watched, even now, and there are a lot of people watching them, but only two with their eyes on him. One, the woman who’d been flirting with him the week before; the other -

Oh. 

Oh,  _ shit.  _

Oh, motherfucker, he wasn’t planning on having to see that face again for the rest of his life.

Jacobi’s eyes are fixed on him. The others might as well not be there at all, for the focus they’re being paid, and he doesn’t look - he doesn’t look quite how Kepler would have expected him to. Less angry. More neutral. He doesn’t like that - he doesn’t like not being able to tell what he’s thinking. 

“Hey,” Jacobi says, coming over when they’re done. His hands are in his pockets and his hair’s longer than Kepler remembers it being, letting it fall into his face a little more. It’s hard not to reach out and brush it from his face. “Can I… buy you a drink?”

Kepler closes his eyes for a moment. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, you can.”


End file.
